Welcome to the tail end of the week: Friday, August 8, 2025, and National Mochi Day. Although it’s a day of cultural appropriation, I happen to love mochi, which are Japanese rice cakes made with pounded glutinous rice. They are often filled with stuff like ice cream or bean paste. Here’s a short but lovely video of Japanese-American making smochi for the New Year (when it’s traditionally eaten”. You can buy tasty ice-cream filled mochi at Trader Joe’s.
Note that making mochi is not easy!
It’s also National Frozen Custard Day (yay!) but also National Zucchini Day (boo!) as well as National Spam Musubi Day (yep, spam sushi wrapped in seaweek; it’s great), Scottish Wildcat Day (I still doubt whether they exist), and International Cat Day. Here are some photos with me and my favorite living felid–Hili, of course:
And here is a photo of Hili drinking milk from a mug that shows her drinking milk from a mug that itself portrays a mug showing the baby Hili:
And a reader’s picture from Divy, the cats that she serves, Jango (l.) and Boba, “looking a bit dignified”. They got a bit of tuna as a Cat Day treat. (Be sure to give your cat a treat!)
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
The news will be a bit truncated today unless I add stuff this morning; I’m writing this on Thursday and it’s been a rough day.
*Netanyahu has proclaimed that Israel is going to occupy all of Gaza, and the words he used were “take control” of the area. That is worrisome! (See also NYT addendum this a.m.: “Israeli security cabinet approves plan to take control of Gaza City” (archived here).
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel planned to take control of all of Gaza, bucking the advice of the Israeli military and warnings that expanding operations could endanger the hostages being held there and kill more Palestinian civilians.
Mr. Netanyahu made the comments in an interview with Fox News ahead of a security cabinet meeting to discuss a proposal to expand military operations in Gaza. They came as talks to achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages have hit an impasse, with Israeli and Hamas officials blaming each other for the deadlock.
When asked whether Israel would take over all of Gaza, he responded, “We intend to.”
Mr. Netanyahu said the move would “assure our security,” remove Hamas from power, and would enable the transfer of the civilian administration of Gaza to another party.
“We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he said in an excerpt from the interview, without providing details on any planned operation.
The prime minister, however, suggested Israel was not interested in maintaining permanent control over the entirety of Gaza. “We don’t want to keep it,” he added. “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.”
In the excerpt published by Fox News, Mr. Netanyahu offered few specifics about his plan. Some analysts have said that he has threatened to widen the offensive to compel Hamas to offer concessions in the cease-fire negotiations.
Note that there is a difference between the two plans: taking over Gaza City is not the same as taking over the entire Gaza strip, and this needs to be clarified.
It’s hard to judge this in the absence of specifics. For Israel’s security I think that Gaza needs a new government, but not one run by Israel or either of the two terrorist organizations that run Palestine now. In the absence of credible leadership, I am stymied about what to do. I wanted two states, but that’s out, as is one state. The United Arab Emirates could take it over, perhaps in collaboration with Jordan. But the problem is that no Arab country wants anything to do with the Palestinians. If you have a possible solution to the “day after” problem, please put it below.
*Bret Stephens has one (somewhat unsatisfactory) answer in his NYT column, “Where can Gaza go from here?” (column archived here). His take on the war is invariably sensible, so it’s worth reading. Some long excerpts:
First and most obviously: The government of Israel needs to rush, in abundant quantities and to immediate and undeniable effect, food and medicine to the places in Gaza that desperately need them.
Agreed if the help doesn’t get into the hands of Hamas. How is that gonna happen?
This is as much a matter of self-interest as it is of humanitarianism. Few things hurt Israel more than the global perception, however tendentious, that it’s deliberately starving kids. Nothing helps Hamas more, either. Whatever benefits Hamas might derive from the aid pale next to the propaganda boon it has achieved through the starvation narrative — even if it’s Hamas itself that bears the final responsibility for causing and perpetuating Gaza’s misery.
But then what? There are three basic options.
The first is a negotiated settlement. Until just two weeks ago, the prospect of a cease-fire appeared to be tantalizingly close. Then Hamas hardened its stance. It has flatly refused to disarm until a Palestinian state is created.
Stephens concludes, correctly, that “diplomacy is a winding road to nowhere.” His second alternative is also a no-go:
The second option is Israel’s complete reoccupation of all of Gaza. Israeli news media are reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has all but settled on this course over the strong opposition of some of his own senior military commanders. This may yet be a negotiating gambit to get Hamas to ease its terms. But it’s also something that the far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government have called for since the war’s beginning.
Whatever the case, it’s a risky and potentially catastrophic gamble. It would put the hostages at immediate risk, since their captors have been given execution orders if Israeli troops approach. It would require another round of bloody urban warfare. And it would involve Israel in a draining effort to stamp out every pocket of guerrilla warfare — a war that sooner or later would bring unbearable foreign and domestic pressure to bear on Israel. Beirut in 1982 is not an experience the Israeli government should ever want to repeat.
And his solution:
But there’s a third option, a middle way between capitulating to Hamas’s outrageous demands and lunging for another Pyrrhic victory.
Shortly after Oct. 7, I reported on a proposal from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called a “squeeze approach,” which he saw as essential to “not play along with the lines that Hamas wrote for us.” Bennett’s central insight was that Israel should avoid being lured into nonstop urban combat and instead surround and isolate the battlefield, allowing food and medicine to get in but not the things Hamas would need to maintain its war machine, particularly fuel for generators in the tunnels.
Updated for the present, this would mean an indefinite Israeli occupation of Gaza’s inner perimeter, including its border with Egypt, and across the territory’s midpoint. But as Jonathan Schanzer writes in Commentary magazine, there should be no reconstruction aid for Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages and agrees to disarm. Food and medicine, yes — in abundance. Concrete and rebar, no — not so long as it might be used to rebuild the territory’s terror tunnels. It’s time for Hamas to feel the brunt of pressure, most of all from Gazans themselves, for the ruins they created.
Those who think of themselves as well-wishers of the Palestinians may want to forever put the moral onus on Israel for all of Gaza’s tragedies. But Gaza would not be where it is now had it not been for Hamas, and Gaza cannot be more than it is now so long as Hamas retains effective control. No thoughtful person can be pro-Palestinian without also being anti-Hamas.
Okay, but who would deliver the food and medicine and prevent Hamas for getting it? And this would also lead to continual guerrilla warfare with Hamas, wouldn’t it? Nor would it put the world on the side of Israel, which would be accused of being an “occupier”.
Stephens adds, correctly:
If Netanyahu makes the colossal mistake of trying to reoccupy Gaza for the long term, then no thoughtful person can be pro-Israel without also being against him.
*At the Free Press, author and reporter Charles Lane discusses why he changed his mind about the death penalty. He used to be opposed to it, but now he favors it. But his reasons are largely retributive, as he admits it’s not a deterrent.
I’m no Trump fan. He’s made a mockery of federal justice on numerous occasions, most notably by pardoning the January 6 rioters and ordering federal prosecutors to drop a corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams. But I agree with him on this one.
Deeds such as those for which Mangione, Rodriguez, and Boelter stand accused arguably rank among the “worst of the worst”—crimes so grievous that jurors should have death as a sentencing option. New York, Washington, D.C., and Minnesota do not provide for that, so the only alternative is parallel prosecution under federal laws that contemplate capital punishment for specific crimes.
. . . However, my thinking evolved over the course of my journalism career, including several years covering capital litigation at the Supreme Court. I found the system undeniably imperfect, but less “broken” and impervious to reform than the critics argued. In 2010, I published a short book, Stay of Execution, explaining my thinking.
What used to give me pause was my belief—held by most death penalty opponents—that there were inadequate safeguards against the execution of an innocent person. Indeed, I thought the risk would always be nonzero and that was too high, even if it meant no death penalty for the “worst of the worst.”
Then I started reporting on claims of “actual innocence,” as the anti–death penalty movement referred to cases of allegedly wrongly convicted people on death row. To my surprise, many of them did not pan out.
But what about the ones that DO pan out? Isn’t it better to give people life without parole than execute one innocent person, a person who could be freed if they hadn’t been executed?
. . . Wrongful executions have undeniably occurred in U.S. history, especially of black men wrongly accused of raping white women in the South. But there have been no proven wrongful executions in the “modern” era of capital punishment—the period since the Supreme Court instituted reforms in 1976. It’s true that legitimate exonerations and last-minute court interventions in doubtful cases, such as that of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma, have occurred. But that increasingly seemed to me evidence that the system does, in fact, have safeguards against the ultimate error, albeit slow-moving ones.
Still, what is the advantage of killing someone? Lane admits that the death penalty is not a deterrent, and is it not possible that someone who would otherwise be killed could actually be reformed and eventually be released? And if you must impose the death penalty as a form of retribution, which is how Lane wants to use it, isn’t life without parole just as bad a punishment? Many prisoners think it is. At any rate, there is no objective right or wrong here; the only facts adduced go in opposite directions (no innocent people killed recently, but it’s not a deterrent). My preference is not to kill prisoners, but other people may differ.
The claim that the Trump administration might push the NSF to fund research with an “ideological bent” was rich. The NSF has been supporting ideologically driven research for years, much of it through its Directorate for STEM Education. The directorate’s $1.15 billion budget in 2024—a full ninth of the foundation’s $9.2 billion budget and much higher than funding for biology, computer science, and engineering—is just a starting point for gauging how much the NSF spent on education projects. Other directorates, nominally focused on hard science, also distributed education grants.
The NSF’s education grant-making has been focused on racial victimhood. The education directorate plays a key role in boosting the NSF’s diversity metrics. Its program managers—who approve and oversee grants—are disproportionately minorities, especially minority women. Grant recipients also tend to be disproportionately minority. This imbalance may reflect the composition of the applicant pool for once, since America’s schools of education, the feeders for NSF education program managers and education awardees, are themselves disproportionately minority. This skew is even greater in STEM-related education specialties, and not just because those specialties are devoted to formulating racism-based explanations for the underrepresentation of minorities in STEM. These education fields serve as a safe harbor for STEM graduates who opt out of STEM careers, and this category, too, is disproportionately minority.
She gives some dire examples of “social justice” grants given by the NSF, and says that one good thing happened: group-preference grants were eliminated. But more cuts still need to be made:
On April 18, the NSF announced that it would no longer fund projects that “give preference to some groups [based on] protected class or characteristics”—in other words, based on race and sex. On May 9, the NSF announced that it was disbanding its most concentrated source of racially ideological grant-making: the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, housed within the Directorate for STEM Education. By May 21, it had cut off funding for 1,752 grants in progress, including Holly’s. Naturally, the press played the race card, noting that the cuts “reduced the diversity of NSF’s pool of funded scientists,” as Science put it. Blacks suffered the heaviest blow, according to Science, with a cancellation rate four times higher than their representation among total NSF grantees. Such a disparity is hardly surprising, given that racism-themed grants serve as a vehicle for increasing black representation among NSF awardees.
Getting rid of the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM was a good start, but the education directorate contains three other divisions as well: Graduate Education, Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings, and Undergraduate Education. All should be eliminated.
Like the Division of Equity for Excellence, those three additional divisions are mere extensions of education schools, whose effect on the transmission of knowledge has been disastrous. The main purpose of graduate schools of education is to obscure a basic truth: student learning results from self-discipline, demanding coursework, and unbending expectations from teachers who are masters of content. Education schools conceal that truth with vast clouds of verbal squid ink. Dip randomly into the remaining portfolio of the Directorate for STEM Education, and you come up with grant solicitations such as the following: [you can read it yourself]
. . . While the cuts to the education and social-science directorates were too timid, cuts to the hard-science directorates were arguably too sweeping: biological sciences is down 71.5 percent; mathematical and physical sciences, which includes chemistry, physics, and astronomy, is down 67 percent; engineering is down 75 percent, and computer and information science and engineering is down 65 percent. Some major projects have been eliminated entirely. The NSF will stop funding Hawaii’s Thirty Meter Telescope, in favor of the Giant Magellan Telescope, planned for Chile. An astrophysicist (and Trump supporter) laments: “We would appear to be handing over a century of world leadership in astronomy back to our European competitors. At least for a generation or two.”
I agree with the last bit, but the other stuff, while it sounds like it should be cut, bothers me a bit as I haven’t seen any of those grants. But yes, the NSF has been ideologically slanted towards progressive politics for a while. Mac Donald’s article is long, so read it and judge for yourself.
*Finally, the reliable AP oddities section reports that people are throwing sex toys onto the court during WNBA games. They don’t name them, but one site refers to them as “brightly colored entities.” Is the word “dildo” politically incorrect?
The WNBA is still struggling with a string of sex-toy disturbances.
In the past week and a half, sex toys have been thrown on court during games in Atlanta on July 29, Chicago on Aug. 1, Los Angeles on Aug. 5 and Chicago again on Thursday night, with the most recent object hitting the court in the closing seconds of the Atlanta Dream’s victory over the Sky.
The sex toy that landed on the court in Los Angeles nearly hit Fever guard Sophie Cunningham during Indiana’s game against the Sparks. Sex toys were also thrown at games in New York and Phoenix last Tuesday but didn’t reach the court. Police say another toy was thrown at a game in Atlanta on Aug. 1, although it’s unclear if that one reached the court.
The distractions have created unexpected challenges for the league, the teams and the players, but also for arena security.
One man was arrested in Georgia: “charged with disorderly conduct, criminal trespassing, public indecency and indecent exposure. All four charges are misdemeanors in the state of Georgia, meaning that if he is convicted, the punishment for each can be a fine of up to $1,000 or jail time of up to 12 months.” This is not a joke, it’s harassment of women and demeaning their (successful) attempt to get more public attention. I don’t know if jail is the appropriate punishment, but fine the guy and give him a police record.
I found a video, and yes, it’s a dildo. Who thought this was funny?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hli consorts with the infant from upstairs:
Julia: Since you didn’t come to me, I came to you.
Hili: That’s always the best solution.
In Polish:
Julia: Ponieważ ty nie przyszłaś do mnie, ja przyszłam do ciebie.
Hili: To zawsze jest najlepsze rozwiązanie.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:
From Now That’s Wild:
Here’s a long Twitter back-and-forth between J. K. Rowling and Sally Hines, a British sociologist and gender-studies academic. Hines says that Rowling cannot make pronouncements on sex and gender issues because Rowling hasn’t studied them. Rowling proceeds to dismantle Hines in a verbal “death of a thousand cuts”. I am glad I agree in the main with JKR because I wouldn’t want to be on the side against her. The exchange goes on and on here, and believe me, you’ll have a few laughs as Rowling persists in asking Hines how she (Rowling) can determine her “gender identity”.
Sally, all this began with you loftily pronouncing that I must read and study the history of sex before I talk about sex and gender. You clearly feel (and have never been shy about telling us all) that you have a breadth and depth of knowledge and insight on these subjects that…
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 5, 2024
Pinker on why the humanities should be more difficult:
The humanities should be harder, by @mattyglesias. Not just humanities. Even at Harvard I feel pressure from Intro Psych students to lower standards: I’ve had to inflate my grade distribution to prevent enrollment from tanking, and see more complaints in student evaluations that…
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) August 7, 2025
From Malcolm: a hundred-year old lightbulb unboxed. It works, and has two settings so if it burns out you switch over the other one, I wonder why they don’t make them like that now. . .
Unboxing a lightbulb over a hundred year old
[📹 dustyoldstuff]pic.twitter.com/grtZhoP32k
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 6, 2025
From Colin Wright via Luana, the height of academic blockheadedness:
Behold this stunning piece of… well… I’m not sure what the hell this is. But it’s published by Duke Univ. Press and uses a lot of strange words to argue that “black” and “anal” are ideologically and representationally synonymous.
This is apparently a feminist stance. 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/vHGb9KDUER
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) August 5, 2025
From my feed, the beginning of a long list of very beautiful places. Check ’em out!
2. Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar pic.twitter.com/y5ftyjOP79
— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) August 6, 2025
One that I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
A Dutch Jew was judged too old to survive, and so upon arrival at Auschwitz was immediately gassed to death. https://t.co/v12Npa2xy2
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 8, 2025
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Speaking of the death penalty, here’s an AI bot announcing that somebody got one. Oy! Matthew says, “New level of dystopia achieved.”
New level of dystopia achieved: A state Supreme Court has announced a death sentence ruling via an AI spokesman
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) 2025-08-07T16:44:11.827Z
Smart bird! Sound up!
Smart! Raven loves winning Tic Tac Toe.
— Insta Science (@instascience.bsky.social) 2025-08-06T15:46:30.523Z
🙂 Hey, have a great Friday, and and all.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them. -Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (8 Jul 1621-1695)
Here’s Rowling derailing another thread to take pot-shots at Hines’ book again. It had me in stitches and the grand finale about seahorses is a humdinger.
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1924876637482430589
Just before every new year in Japan they televise warnings for people to be careful with the mochi as every year a few oldies choke to death on mochi. The traditional mochi they’re eating is much more gooey than the store bought stuff here and in Japan… which is delicious.
On Gaza – Hamas must be ruined forever. The ONLY parameters, the ONLY governing line has to be “How far will the Saudis let us go before they walk away from any deals forever?” Up to that point (and push it a tad) crush every last member of Hamas, with no lower age limit. The Koran provides examples of this type of war, so it is ….kosher. hehehe
Remember… two big reasons for Oct 7 was to bugger any Saudi-Israeli deal, the other is Israel has been boasting about the imminent release of a new laser method of killing projectiles cheaply and efficiently which would have made Hamas’ arsenal obsolete. But the Saudi deal is the big prize to be careful to not endanger.
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
“… no lower age limit.”
Yet another reprehensible statement from Anderson, alongside his approving words concerning nuking the Gazans from a few weeks ago and his assertion that there are no civilians in Gaza, implying not even the 100.000s under the age of seven, from a few days ago.
How terribly sad that such egregiously misanthropic, fascist rhetoric elicits hardly a whisper of disapproval here.
I get where David is coming from and I enjoy reading his contributions.
David is not proposing Israeli policy – he’s expressing dismay and frustration. You could do that too but without the name calling. I enjoy your contributions here and look forward to them even when (like this post) I disagree with them.
If one accepts the “expressing dismay and frustration” defense in this case, then presumably one should accept it when people cry “death to the Jews” or “from the river to the sea” during their pro-Palestinian protests. Better to stridently reject it in both cases.
We do accept that, Jared. Every day. No one is calling for shouting keffiyeh-wearers to be locked up, or even swatted with batons. Some Canadian Jews would like to see Canadian laws against hate speech enforced more elastically. I have to disagree with them. Nor is David going to be traveling to Gaza with murder in his heart.
We do accept with sad equanimity that Israel will do what she needs to do. If she needs to kill child soldiers and hopelessly indoctrinated children, she will kill them. If there are militarized children protecting an enemy military asset even without their acquiescence, they will die. This is not a war crime. In the end, nothing done in the name of military necessity ever is, as long as it is done in a just war.
You must be unfamiliar with Jonathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal.
OK, not absolutely “no” lower limits. I’m not checking birth certificates, but the (Western) ideas of “man” and “boy” are made for civilized countries, not insane terrorist statelets.
Did you know there’s a Hamas Boy Scouts? I think they recruit from 12. (Child solders are, from memory, a war crime in themselves… before we start on the rest of Hamas’ record).
Hamas, of course, being ideologically almost indistinguishable from Al Qaida who flew two planes into the buildings that used to be in my view where I’m writing this. (and my former place of work in 2000-July 2001 as I worked in finance).
So this effects all non-Muslims, you and I, the kuffirs whom the Koran requires believers to never befriend and “kill them where you find them”. Except Jews for which there are more specific and dire instructions in addition. DEI halal style!
Onwards, Mr. Miller:
If somebody is old enough to point a gun at me or strap a suicide vest on they are old enough for me to kill them.
To see how I got here, you should read an article I wrote last year about “education” for the kiddies of Gaza, variously syndicated (and posted here earlier)
https://democracychronicles.org/kindergarten-jihad-who-plays-the-beheaded/
“fascist” is shopworn. Might I suggest “Nazi” that one seems to fly with ideologues who have no real understanding of the Middle East, its history, culture or Islam.
respectfully, if a little exasperated,
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
I am well aware of all these considerations, and much more, and I still do not advocate genocide with the express inclusion of small children.
Your rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Hamas and of the Ayatollahs, one need only substitute one ethnic group for another. But those who employ such rhetoric are of course unable to see this.
Fascist as a label for your rhetoric is naturally shopworn, but fitting nonetheless.
The comparison with Swift’s Modest Proposal is hardly apt, as Swift was employing outlandish hyperbole in order to plead for better treatment of children and to indict a society regarding its neglect and exploitation of children.
‘there have been no proven wrongful executions in the “modern” era of capital punishment’.
You can’t prove a negative so you cannot guarantee that. There have certainly been cases where a person has been executed when copious amounts of dna at a scene did not belong to them. Marcellus Williams was executed even after prosecutors spoke against his execution.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/28/politics/supreme-court-death-penalty-marcellus-williams-richard-glossip
There have also been cases where police have refused to tests for DNA and a person has been executed. Tennessee refused to test items found at the crime scene, but still executed Sedley Alley.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/opinion/dna-death-penalty-sedley-alley.html
DNA tests could easily prove that these two men were guilty. Until that is proven, there could be two heinous killers still walking free, that scares me as much as executing innocent people.
If a law was passed that if someone was executed by mistake, no matter how far into the future the new evidence came to light; then the entire jury, all the prosecuting lawyers, and the judge were to be sent to prison for life without parole the number of people executed would quickly drop to, oh, I don’t know, like maybe zero.
If some dictator, such as yourself, had enough power to pass a law like that over the people’s democratic objection (since most Americans and even most Canadians favour the death penalty and would naturally demand immunity for themselves as jurors), wouldn’t it be simpler to use your benevolent dictatorial power just to ban the death penalty and be done with it? No hunting down judges and jurors in capital cases years after the fact when they might be long dead and beyond the reach of your petty vengeance, just because they disagreed with you on capital punishment. Your proposal strikes me as both silly and vindictive, which is a pretty rare two-fer.
How is: “If a law was passed…” in any way a dictatorial statement? In America a law is passed only after a debate in Congress and a vote. I find your response childish and petty, and isn’t name-calling against Da Roolz?
Woa that’s a bit strong. I assumed from his comment that James was simply making the point that if it affected peoples’ lives directly, then they might take more care over who they decide to kill.
53% of Americans supporting the death penalty is only a small majority and, as Bertrand Russell said, “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing”.
My own opinion is that death is too easy an option for people who commit heinous crimes. You don’t have feelings after you are dead, so you don’t experience any suffering for what you’ve done. Forcing people to stay alive and experience prison is more of a punishment.
Feel free to call me ‘vindictive’ for wanting criminals to live and experience the consequences of their crime, but that is what we should expect from the justice system..
On the case of Marcellus Williams getting the death penalty, I strongly recommend this 15-minute long video:
Ken LaCorte: They all lied about this “innocent” murderer. Oct 22, 2024
Another quote from this video:
I made no claim that he was innocent. I simply stated that he was killed despite the DNA on the murder weapon being proven to come from another male. With advances in technology eg single-cell DNA profiling and direct PCR amplification, they could probably now get a full profile from the unknown male at the scene and he could be traced via genetic genealogy. Williams tried to get more of the crime scene items tested with modern technology, but his request was rejected and he was told that the state had no obligation to check the DNA any further, which is ridiculous.
There is no forensic evidence tying Williams to the crime. The hair and shoe prints weren’t his. The fingerprints were destroyed. The murder weapon only has the DNA of a prosecutor and an investigator. The only trial ‘evidence’ came from an ex girlfriend and a jail informant, neither of whom were eyewitnesses and each of whom told different stories.
I don’t care about his race. I simply care that the crime scene DNA hasn’t been properly. tested and a killer may still be walking the streets.
Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is still possible that Williams may have participated in the crime without leaving DNA, but we can’t prove that unless we identify the person who was at the crime scene and see whether he is associated with Williams.
The case is certainly not strong enough to support state murder. Even the victim’s family didn’t want this to be death penalty case.
Joolz, you wrote: “Williams was killed despite the DNA on the murder weapon being proven to come from another male.”
The maker of the video I recommended said this [@ 7:55 minutes]:
Later in the video it is said that the Innocence Project [@ 10:25, bolding added]
You don’t seem to be reading what I have said.
Please read the comment you are replying to. I explicitly stated that not having his dna on the murder weapon does NOT mean that he is automatically innocent.
I said that “Williams was killed despite the DNA on the murder weapon being proven to come from another male” because that is true. You claim that means I think he is innocent, which I certainly have NOT stated. Quite the opposite. I don’t know whether he is innocent or a murderer, but I know the facts, as they are, certainly don’t warrant murdering him.
Why are you telling me, in bold, about the dna on the weapon? I have already told YOU that it comes back to an investigator and a prosecutor. Presumably, you didn’t read where I told you that. Because of that botch up, and the screw up with the scene fingerprints, and the lies about the victim’s clothes being taken away, the state should be testing other items from the crime scene to find proper evidence against Williams.
Police need to complete their investigation properly so we can all determine if he is 100% innocent or 100% guilty.
It is not helpful just to dismiss any facts that you disagree with. It is also unfair to criticise me and point out things I have already told you, as if I don’t know them. It comes across as patronising. I read a LOT of true crime and follow several excellent forensic podcasts. I follow the latest developments in DNA testing. I make my own mind up and, in this case, a man has been executed without all of the facts having been established. That is unacceptable.
Ken LaCorte just seems to want stir up the MAGA brigade. His whole demeanor is aggressive. He should sit calmly and look at the facts. He has not given any facts that show Williams is 100% guilty. He doesn’t care that there could be a killer on the loose and the state has dna that could trace him. Whether it’s in addition to Williams, or instead of, no one has any idea at the moment.
If he is so sure that Williams is guilty he should be demanding the additional DNA tests to prove it. Then everyone will know the truth, but he doesn’t seem to care about justice being seen to be done.
Joolz, your response to my recommendation of a YouTube video on Williams started like this:
I responded to your response because in the just quoted passage you seem to be saying that there was DNA on the murder weapon that was not from Williams (true) AND that this DNA (from the knife) was from an unknown male at the scene of the crime who may have been the murderer. My understanding is that the DNA on the knife was later traced to known people (who definitely did not commit the murder – a prosecutor and a police investigator) and can therefore not be used to suggest that there was an unknown male at the crime scene. I suppose there was other male DNA at the crime scene (not from the victim’s husband or from Williams), and maybe you believe that all that other DNA must be traced before the death penalty for Williams would be justified.
I never stated that you believe that Williams is innocent (just re-read my response). There were no eyewitnesses to the murder. Williams had previous convictions for burglary, and he was connected to several items stolen from the murder victim (the laptop, a ruler, a calculator). So I believe that he did burgle the victim’s home. It’s possible that somebody else was the murderer and Williams burgled the victim’s home on the day of the murder before or after the murder. I do not know the totality of the evidence against Williams, but I assume it was the totality of the evidence that lead to William’s conviction. And then there was substantial post-conviction judicial review of the case.
All I’m arguing for is some caution in claiming that the evidence against Williams was insufficient for the death penalty (media coverage, on which we have to rely, is quite variable in quality/trustworthiness; and this case involves a black man, that is, a member of a group held sacred by woke-friendly or opportunistic journalists). I’m not saying that there can’t be judicial errors. Marcellus Williams was a bad guy, who, at age 29, had 14 convictions, mostly for felonies (armed robbery, burglary, assault, theft, steal a car, and unlawful use of a weapon) … Caution that’s all I’m recommending.
I’m sorry, but I can trust no man who dislikes zucchini.
Okay, well I guess you should be banned, then, since you can’t trust me.
I’m quite sure that comment was intended as a friendly jest with a smile and a wink, so I hope you didn’t really ban him.
The raven is not that clever. On its third move it missed the win. 🙂
Sally Hines is clueless. She has stated that “Before the Enlightenment the female skeleton didn’t exist”. The image that a person called Keef drew in response is funny. I had to make a meme of it.
https://x.com/joolzzt/status/1782547966152073596
Of course, Hines does not mean this literally, but in the sense that it was not recognized as such before then. Certainly, the belaboured lexical idiosyncracies of her ilk are quite misleading and contribute more to confusion than to clarity.
I realise that she doesn’t think that literally, but expressing the statement in such a bald way likely means some of those unencumbered by excessive IQ [*] will now quote the ‘fact’ as gospel. If a TRA says it, then it must be true.
*Thank you to Exulansic for my new favorite expression 😁
Cheers Joolz!
I adore Exulansic. I even sent her a few bucks and am thinking of going to the GENSPECT meeting in New Mexico next month.
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
I joined the top rank subscription rate at a time when I wasn’t able to do much gender critical activism for a while myself. I figured I’d help her do a bit more to make up for it. I didn’t get around to dropping the rate back, but I don’t have any kids to leave my money to so I think of it as using some money to do good in the world.
Enjoy Genspect, I hope it’s a bit less controversial this time 😁 I’d like to go but I’m not keen on visiting the USA at the moment. My bucket list has 6 things in the USA on it, and they are all on ‘hold’.
Joolz, your cartoons are hilarious and accurate. Thanks for sharing them.
I guess you know that before his gender epiphany, Charles Clymer was one of the most vile misogynists on social media.
Thanks, I’m just responding to the stupid things TRAs say.
I don’t know much about Clymer, but that doesn’t surprise me. He’s still a misogynist. Most autogynephiles seem to be. Their jealousy of women and desire to be one often tips over into hatred of real women. It’s why many trans identified men claim to be better women than actual women.
Exactly.
Here are 2 articles about Charles:
https://www.salon.com/2014/12/02/fast_company_promotes_live_chat_with_creepy_male_feminist/
https://www.thecut.com/2014/10/you-want-to-be-a-male-feminist-maybe-dont.html
The second one is behind a paywall, but he doesn’t sound like the sort of person I’d want to know. I saw a video of him, he towered above women and got intimidatingly close to them. He’s another one who looks very different without photo filters on 😱
Thanks for posting about Heather Mac Donald’s article and the NSF debacle. She is spot on: the cuts were too broad but the cuts to the STEM Education directorate were not nearly deep enough. The waste in that whole directorate is incredible.
For fun I used the NSF online awards search tool to find grants by the STEM Education directorate that featured “intersectional” in the title or abstract. There are 188 awards, with titles that imply really dire contents. I read two:
This one
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2430520
would have spent $1.2 million to train three postdocs in “the science of broadening participation for disabled and multiply-minoritized STEM students”.
This one
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2315041
was on track to spend $3.2 million on “design principles [and] guidelines for community organizations to integrate curricula and professional development into an intersectional AI learning ecosystem” so that “artificial intelligence (AI) creators and Black girls, aged 9-14 [can] expand the range of perspectives and voices that are a part of AI technology.” I would love to look at the budget for that award, but one only has so much time in the day 🙁 The PI at Arizona State had two co-PIs who together got another ~$2 million for the same project. Robyn Blumner at Skeptical Enquirer wrote about the same project and PIs before all those grants were cancelled.
skepticalinquirer.org/2025/02/the-ideological-hijacking-of-science-funding/
I guess it’s possible that such spending at the National Science Foundation could be defended on some grounds related to scientific knowledge. But I doubt it.
[edit to add: Sorry about the multiple links. I tried to disable them but the NSF links embedded anyway. For some reason my comment was still not consigned to moderation purgatory.]
Mike, I think two limits is the maximum of links the system will permit. Your third link, to the piece from the Sleptical Inquirer, was not recognized as link.
According to Bret Stephens: “Until just two weeks ago, the prospect of a cease-fire appeared to be tantalizingly close. Then Hamas hardened its stance. It has flatly refused to disarm until a Palestinian state is created.”
Thanks to plans by France, the UK, and Canada to recognize a Palestinian state, Hamas has been granted a new lease on life. Their new recalcitrance can entirely be blamed on the leaders of these three countries.
Right you are.
I continue to intend to join (X) simply to be able to read the entirety of JKR’s threads; Helen Joyce, too. But I procrastinate.
I was rather struck by this and its eighty year old historical parallel:
It would put the hostages at immediate risk, since their captors have been given execution orders if Israeli troops approach.
The repeated refusal by Japan’s military to make peace on terms acceptable to the Allies and the order to execute 300,000 POW’s if the Allies invaded, became reasons justifying the two nuclear attacks eighty years ago.